To Bollywood, With Love

Bollywood, my love, here is a friendly thought. Stop! Step back. Take a break. Go on a vacation somewhere far way. Refresh. Find yourself once again. Then, come right back. We all need to take a breather once in a while. It is about time you took one too.

I grew up with the ‘Rajs’, the ‘Simrans’, the ‘Rahuls’ and the ‘Anjalis’ you put in my way time and again and you know what? I didn’t mind them one bit. I did not have an issue with the unending fields of mustard, the dancing flowers, the flying dupatta or the train that is invariably leaving the platform. Nor did I mind the dirty cop, the evil mother-in-law, the scheming sister-in-law, the angelic son, the bed-ridden mother, the angry father or the all-forgiving, ideal ‘bahu’ who probably made life difficult for the real-life bahus of the time. So you see? I have taken everything you have thrown my away in near-sportsmanlike spirit – never questioning your efforts or your film-making abilities. But right now, at this very moment in time as your very ardent fan and well-wisher, I am pleading with you to stop!

It all started with Munni. The item song was back! And who better than the girl who made a trend out of dancing on train-tops to do the honours? Munni had just about finished her last ‘thumka’ when Sheila came along blowing her right out of the water. The quintessential‘item number’ had just been redefined. The country was still reeling under the effects of these last ‘numbers’ and the acts that came with it when there came Shalu who claimed to better Munni and Sheila. Now that was saying something. It was quite easy to ignore Shalu. But before I knew it, the item song had caught on! And how! It came to a point where even a, say, serious thriller with controversial political undertones had to have an item song in it. It became an unwritten rule. “Here’s an interesting script! How do we sell it? Let us make a complete mockery of the exceptional storyline, add a fight scene in a bar and then have our heroine strip down to her bare essentials and do a scintillating dance number to a catchy song!”

And then came the Rajnikanth phase. The unanimous laughter to all the jokes was still ringing in my ears when your heroes unashamedly started defying Newton too! Bending bullets, single-handedly decimating an army of highly-built, ferocious thugs, creating tornadoes of dust, riding two bikes at a time in one movie and then two horses in the next. Entertainment! In came Prabhudeva and suddenly Bollywood was in ‘South mode’. Sonakshi Sinha moved in with her dark shades and became the epitome of the crazy village belle who looked extremely South Indian but was somehow expected to fit into a North Indian village setting. ‘Aa ante amalapuram’ became ‘Aa re pritam pyare’ with not one, not two – but three actresses dancing to it. 'Ringa Ringa' turned into 'Dhinka Chika'. Lyrics stopped possessing even the ghosts of sense. Salman was the new Vijay. John was the new Suriya. And Sonakshi Sinha was Trisha, Asin and Nayanthara rolled into one. You churned out movies every week – almost like an essential routine. Your songs, your scripts and even your actors started looking, sounding and seeming the same. Your films went from being visual renditions of stories worth narrating to a bunch of scenes aimed at complementing a heroes biceps or a heroines ‘assets’. You made a movie about heroines, titled it ‘Heroine’ and promptly put in an item song. You could not have been more apt.

So here is the thing. I do not want to watch any more ‘snazzy’, 'bold'  item numbers. I don’t even like the phrase anymore. Being a dancer, that is definitely saying something. I do not want any more six-packs or eight-packs or chiselled bodies that are reminiscent of the very Gods of Greece. I am tired of them all. I do not want to hear about another son of a sardar. I do not want any more size-zeroes. So Bollywood, my love, take a break and redefine your priorities. Give me more of the ‘Rajs’ and ‘Simrans’ for all I care. Or even the evil mother-in-law. Give me substance! Give me ‘Shaitan’. Give me ‘Barfi’. Give me a story. Give me an experience. Give me anything but what you are giving me now. So, stop. Think. And for heavens’ sake, come back when you are ready.